Search Results

Rodney Lea Nichols was born on December 29, 1964, in Burlington, Iowa. His family relocated to Albuquerque, New Mexico when Rod was about three years old, but he has always remained an Iowan at heart. Nichols early on adopted Iowa as one of his favorite college teams. “Back in the day, if you got the […]

It was no surprise that Eddie McNichol would play professional baseball. Born on January 10, 1879, in Martins Ferry, Ohio, he grew up on Wheeling Island surrounded by baseball and baseball players. Wheeling Island, a tiny strip of land in the middle of the Ohio River between Ohio and West Virginia, produced several young men […]

“Ben was a fine hitter. He could have starred on any team in the major [leagues] except the Yankees. He wound up playing behind Babe Ruth and Bob Meusel in the Yankee outfield.” — Hall of Famer Joe Sewell[i] One wonders what might have become of a player like Benjamin Edwin Paschal had he actually […]

Rarely is the first game of a major-league career the pinnacle of that career. But when New York Yankees manager Joe McCarthy handed Russ Van Atta the ball on April 25, 1933 against the Washington Nationals, it was. Van Atta masterfully blanked Washington, 16-0, retiring 14 of the last 16 batters as the Yankees unleashed […]

With a flattened nose and the grim jaw of a heavyweight boxer, Steve O’Neill looked like someone born to be a catcher, and for much of his 17-year major-league career he was arguably the best all-around backstop in the game. An extremely smart man, O’Neill did all the things a good catcher is supposed to […]

Which pitcher earned the first win for the expansion Montreal Expos in 1969? If you said left-handed reliever Don Shaw, you would be correct. Besides the Expos, Shaw, a journeyman pitcher, applied his craft in parts of five seasons between 1967 and 1972 for the New York Mets, the St. Louis Cardinals, and the Oakland […]

“He came back from the war, raised seven kids, practiced law and life moves on.”1 So said Madison (Wisconsin) attorney John Gerlach in a 2012 interview about his late father and law associate, Johnny Glen “Henna” Gerlach, who captained the 1937 and 1938 University of Wisconsin baseball teams (a .415 hitter his senior season of […]

Coming off consecutive 20-win seasons in the Class A Eastern League, big things were expected of 1904 Detroit Tigers pitching prospect Cy Ferry. But wildness and arm problems derailed the club’s hopes for Ferry and he was farmed out after making only three regular season appearances for the Tigers. A one-game audition for the 1905 […]

The New York Yankees of 1946 had many of the same stars who made them the dominant team of the pre-World War II years, but they finished in third place, seventeen games behind the Boston Red Sox, under three different managers. After the season, Bucky Harris, an experienced and well-traveled skipper, was brought in to […]

During the Deadball Era, luck and persistence were nearly as important as talent in determining the ultimate success of a young player. In The Glory of Their Times, Al Bridwell spoke about the breaks that helped him reach the major leagues. Others of more modest talent reached the major leagues through persistence. Dale Porter’s career […]

In a poll of National League sportswriters conducted in April 1964, Larry Bearnarth was tabbed as the New York Mets’ best young pitcher.1 The franchise’s first bonus player and the first hurler to win four consecutive major league decisions, the tall blond right-hander established a club record with 58 appearances during his rookie season. Bearnarth’s […]

Ask American sports fans about Al Unser, and they’ll probably think of the four-time winner of the Indianapolis 500 or his son Al Jr., who won twice in his own right. Yet decades before, another Al Unser – no kin to the race car drivers – played parts of four seasons in the major leagues […]

Few names in early 20th-century America incited as much animosity and vitriol as Kaiser Wilhelm II, the emperor of Germany. After assuming the throne in 1888, the bombastic and often tactless leader inaugurated an aggressive foreign policy program that antagonized nations and directly led to World War I, in 1914. No wonder Ohio-born Irvin Wilhelm […]

At 6′ 2″ and 180 lbs, Vean Gregg was a lanky, loose-jointed southpaw who had a world of confidence, a wicked curve ball, and a roller-coaster career hampered by arm injuries. As a 26-year-old rookie for the 1911 Cleveland Naps, Gregg was only three years removed from pitching in the deepest bush of the remote […]

When John Joseph O’Brien took the field for the Brooklyn Bridegrooms on July 25, 1891, he was “unheralded and unknown,”1 described as “a little pale-faced chap who looked as meek as a country youth fresh from the mourners’ bench.”2 He hit the first pitch he saw for a line single to right, then added another […]

Fifty games into their 1967 season the Houston Astros were on another trip to the bottom of the National League standings. At 19-31 and 14½ games out of first place, they were on track for a won-lost record even worse than the previous year’s 72-90. But an early June trip by the Astros to St. […]

Pete Rose’s return to the Cincinnati Reds on August 17, 1984, marked a high point in a desperately low season for the team. At 51-70, the Reds had little left to play for and only the San Francisco Giants gave the Reds a cushion from the dampness of the NL West basement. Rose, Cincinnati-born and […]

The rising rafters of New Comiskey Park peered over the wall of the old ballpark across 35th Street, as though they, too, wanted one last look.1 It was the final Opening Day at Comiskey Park, kicking off the last of 81 seasons there. Sorrow for the storied park was somewhat tempered by the new one […]

In the midst of a career year with the Pittsburgh Pirates in 2008, 29-year-old Xavier Nady was hitting .330 with 13 home runs and 57 RBIs in 89 games when he was dealt to the New York Yankees, along with Damaso Marte, for four players1 on July 26. Nady’s arrival at his new home field […]

Fifty-seven batters; four hits; one precious and decisive run. That was the story in a nutshell when the Baltimore Orioles hosted the Seattle Mariners on Tuesday night, September 1, 1981. Seattle’s Glenn Abbott and Baltimore’s Steve Stone and Tippy Martínez threw dueling two-hitters, with all the hits bunched in the fourth and sixth innings. Abbott’s […]

Dave “Boo” Ferriss, an ex-GI discharged from the Army Air Corps in February 1945, began his major-league career with an astonishing eight consecutive wins in 1945. The start of his career was unprecedented, since Ferriss had minimal time as a professional player prior to his debut.1 In his first three starts for the Boston Red […]

In a game played before a Fenway Park crowd of 34,113, the Minnesota Twins turned two triple plays against the Boston Red Sox, a feat that had never happened before in the major leagues. Despite the rare accomplishment, the Twins lost to the Red Sox, 1-0. Left-hander Tom Bolton, a veteran of the Red Sox […]

On the very last day of the 1975 season, the Oakland Athletics employed four pitchers to no-hit the California Angels. Before a home crowd of 22,131, Oakland’s manager Alvin Dark had a plan to have Vida Blue, his ace starter, go only five innings and then rest him for the playoffs. Relievers Glenn Abbott, Paul […]

After a successful inaugural season in 1943, the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL) expanded into Milwaukee and Minneapolis.1 It soon became obvious that the move into larger metropolitan areas was a mistake, as both teams struggled to draw fans.2 The Minneapolis entry, which had been previously known as the Millerettes and Lakers, picked up […]